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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

Finally I got one UMAX ASTRA 612S scanner working in linux (also in Win98) 
on a pci SCSI card, Adaptec (takes module aic7xx.o) with SW81 SANE package 
and the SW81 adaptec.s kernel with no need for the module.  (I could not 
get bare.i SW71 and the module to work, have not yet tried zipslack.s).
(Apart from the fact that the glass plate needs to be glued back on.)

The HP Scanjet 3p works in Win3.1 but scanimage cannot find the scanner, 
tho linux recognizes the card (using scsi modules - perhaps I should try a 
scsi kernel instead).

Now we have another ASTRA (1200S), acquired for $1 (no card, no cable, now 
power supply, no terminator - we used a scsi zip drive as terminator for 
it) and an ISA adaptec scsi card (aha152x) which won't work in linux or 
Windows, though the scsi card is recognized.  Windows was supposed to 
notice the scanner and load Vistascan scanner software automatically.

The scanner works with the other setup (another very similar ASUS 
motherboard but the other pci scsi card).  We jumpered the card all 
possible ways and Windows would find it as IRQ9 address 140 but there was 
a conflict with IRQ2 cascade, Windows would not accept IRQs 10 or 11 (they 
had been assigned to PCI bus) so we unplugged the PS/2 mouse and set the 
card to IRQ12 and address 340 and there were no more conflicts (also no 
more mouse, of course), and the second AHA152x driver worked with those 
default settings, but Windows insisted there were no devices plugged into 
it.  So Windows and linux found the card but not the scanner.
/proc/scsi/scsi - no attached devices (after using a scsi kernel)
scanimage -L - found no devices either  sane-find-image :  no devices

Hal has a scsi card and scanner that worked with scanimage in one computer 
but not in another.

So I called someone who knows more about hardware, and after convincing 
him that I had used the identical software and the only differences were 
the scsi card and motherboard, he explained that:

1.  Scanner software is not written to support all scsi cards, for 
instance scanimage obviously does not support the little HP 
scanner-specific scsi card.  Linux complained that it had no IRQ.  I 
looked up the correct card module (but did not check it for IRQ jumpers- 
it worked as provided with Win31 HP 3p software).  SOmeone online said how 
to insmod the module for that particular card and it would not work right 
because of the lack of interrupts.  Win31 must do things differently.

We do not have the original cards for these two ASTRAs (people never think 
to include them with the scanner when they give it away).  Apparently 
Windows Vistascan liked the pci card but not the isa card, same for 
scanimage.

2.  There are sometimes conflicts between the scsi card and the 
motherboard, which explains Hal's problem.  It might even explain our 
problem, so we will try the isa scsi card in the other ASUS motherboard 
some day. Or try to get the scsi card that came with the scanner (from the 
friend of a friend who sent it to us because the glass came off but has to 
figure out where the computer went).

The scsi zip drive works when plugged in through the scanner (it may work 
in only one of the two scsi ports of the scanner) in DOS, by using the 
'guest' program that is provided by IOMEGA.  To save time, I remark out of 
guest.ini all but the relevant .sys file.  You can look to see what is 
loaded in memory in order to find out the required .sys file (mem/c/p with 
our mem program shows us the details).  We had to set the SCSI ID to 6 
because the scanner was 5, and will try it in linux with these correct 
setting on the pci scsi card then the isa.  (It did not work with both set 
to 5).

To celebrate having the scanner working, I just did my federal taxes, 
which need to be copied.  I have learned to scan to a .pbm file at 150 
dpi. Is there some simple way to send a .pbm file to lp0, such as

cat filename.pbm > lp0 ?